


Colour Me Dead

by bladeCleaner



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ancestor-Era, Ancestors, Cutting, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Genocide, Murder, Suicide, Time Travel Shenanigans, angst everywhere, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 00:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tired Handmaid does what is necessary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Colour Me Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [respiratem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/respiratem/gifts).



You fast forward. As far as you can possibly go for now; you are bone tired and chilled down to your soul. You have seen everything happen too many times and the weight of your head is threatening to snap your neck off. Thousands of sweeps into the future, you search for something that hasn't run itself into the ground. 

You descend upon a towering hive. The large biclops on the roof sleeps contentedly. You press your fingers to the red glass, watching two trolls. The girl catches your eye. She is the spit of you with a much larger, cheerful smile. Next to her is a boy with four horns and mismatched glasses.

You watch her laugh and glow alongside him-she is more alive than you will ever be.

There is so much you are tired of already, including sadness.

***

You ache for something; anything other than this repetition; of death, warfare, wiping warm saturated colour off your black-green dress and rubbing blood off the emerald fleur-de-lis. You want to press your forehead against death’s and feel his icy kiss. Instead, he gives you no solace. You are his best servant; one wrist flick and cue ball stick wands sink too easily into eyeballs and cartilage. You would think he would reward you accordingly. You even try sometimes, carelessly flinging yourself into harm's way or stepping too far back on a cliff when chased by mobs; but your body betrays you too easily, uprighting yourself or blasting your way out of danger. Death is a cruel master who lets you have nothing but an eternal hunger.

Your methods were different when you were sweeps and sweeps younger. Sticking your fingers into electric sockets, trying to drown yourself in the bath, slitting your wrists and trying to enrage your caretaker; you have tried them all. Now you are older than the first troll to be born before you, and you will be older still. You have lived long enough to know that fighting is pointless.

You stare over the lights of Alternia city and sigh.  You pull out an ebony sheet from your pocket. Doc Scratch’s assignments are written on black paper in green ink. None of them are numbered, since you have all the time in the world. You’ll get to them all, sooner or later.

***

When you come to him, he looks terrified. The desert stretches around you for miles and miles, with no shelter or shade bar this hive. No one would dare to come here and be burnt by the sun, no matter how determined. The Dolorosa has chosen well. But she is not here. You are.

You expected pleading. You expected “oh mercy, Demoness”. He says nothing. He is scared shitless, that much is evident, but you notice that he does not beg or cower. This is one who has walked with the threat of death all of his life; you simply seem to be the one that delivers.

How merciful it would be to kill him now. Your hands itch to strike fast and lay him down with his eyes closed. But you have already known this story from the very beginning. He will die painfully and slowly, with no dignity at all.

“Rest easy, Vantas. I am not here to kill you.” you murmur, settling your green shoes on the ground. You notice that he is clutching a dream journal to his chest.

“W-why not?” he asks. He knows who you are. Even isolated as he is, tales of your doings spread everywhere. Wherever the jade and rose moon touch, talk of the vicious Handmaiden of Death collects.

“The price of your life is a story. Tell me a story, little one. Tell me about your visions.”

His yellow eyes widen and he starts a little at the word visions.

“My…my visions? They’re just wiggler’s dreams. They’re stupid. They’re not real.” he insists.

“Would you like to know how old I am?” you ask gently.

“Um…” he looks you up and down, taking in your curled horns and long side-bangs. You tower over him. “Twenty sweeps?”

“As of this moment, I am six thousand sweeps.” His eyes become big golden saucers.

“Wow!” He exclaims, forgetting who you are for a moment. His hands look like they are itching to wave around in excitement. You forgot how enthusiastic wigglers can get. “You must know everything! Even more than my guardian. She’s only twenty sweeps old. Which is ancient, but six thousand!”

Then he remembers and his windhole snaps closed.

“I know of many things. One of them being what you dream of existed. Once.”

He drops the journal. Then he scrambles to pick it up again and flicks through the pages rapidly. His head snaps up and down, looking at you and then the words.

“Wait, so-so-we were all equal once? No one cared about mutant blood or tyrian blood or seadwellers or or or or subjugglators and we were all _happy_ and didn’t kill people ever?”

You nod.

He spends the rest of the afternoon happily telling you everything he has ever dreamed of. He does something no one ever has done for you or will ever do again: he asks you to sit down and makes you tea. Granted, you do not need food or water, but he seems so adamant that you take a cup. He seems to have tried boiling it very carefully in the sun, stirring the leaves just right while glancing at you nervously and then looking away.

You sit and sip tea while he goes on for hours and hours. He paints Beforus as a paradise where all were equal and given respect. His is a beautiful vision-and it will be the noose around his neck.

When the Dolorosa comes back with supplies, you set your cup down and vanish.

You reappear in the cold desert after everything has been said and done. You sink to your knees. You would cry, but you have killed too many and seen too much to shed real tears. All you can produce are dry, heaving sobs that wrack your body, as if you are trying your best not to drown.

A Handmaid does whatever is necessary.

***

The black papers seem endless.

You have just dumped five tonnes of garbage into the Alternian sea. The sea dwellers were peaceful enough before now, but enraged, they will find in themselves the feral strength that will become their best asset and the cunning to exact revenge.

The land dwellers will soon awaken to find themselves flailing around in fire. Their cosy hives, so well-maintained and designed, will collapse within themselves in the bright flames. The lure is simple, yet cruel; the survivors will rush to the nearest source of water. They lie in waiting, the ocean’s children; their hands thirsting for blood. The only person to survive will be a tealblood, who will run into the next village and strike fear into all their hearts of the Demoness, whom she saw taking garbage from the dump.

When you first hear the notorious nomenclature from the dying lips of a greenblood, you will throw your head back and laugh. The hysterical chuckle is strangled and raw; her moirail will cut her own throat after hearing it with a slice of rusted glass.

In a town lives a blueblood, the only one of his kind. After you are done here, killing all the remaining villagers save the tealblood, you will go to him. You will convince him, after a few drinks, to arm wrestle with his kismesis; a low brownblood. Instinctively, he has always repressed his immense strength-but after a few lost rounds, the frustration will get so he will kill his black lover. Blind from grief and fury, he will kill everyone in sight.

This is merely the beginning. Stitch is already complaining about the amount of dresses he has to make for you, all of them turn out to be either ripped or blood-splattered. Your death toll has already outstripped the Empress', even at the peak of her power.

You note that the green is already pooling around your feet. The soles of your shoes are already coated with blood. More will not make any difference.

Another black paper; another assignment to fulfill. You teleport, the action almost automatic.

***

In between organizing the subjugglators and burning down the crops of lowbloods, you remember him.

He walks the sands far from his camp. His face is shaded with the orange and violet hues of twilight. Hovering uncertainly, you debate as to whether to say anything or to just leave. There are many plans still weighing down in your pockets.

“Hello, Demoness,” his rough voice startles you. He doesn’t turn around, his cloak flapping in the wind.

You give up the act and settle down on the sand behind him. He looks over at you and makes a small gesture with his head, inviting you to walk with him.

“I don’t believe what they’re all telling me, you know,” he says matter-of-factly.

“You would be wise to believe all tales of me are true. If some of them are not, the fact that they materialized should be truth enough of how much you should fear me.”

He looks at you as you walk, eyes bright.

“You may have done them. But you’re not evil.”

You go slower. “What makes you so certain?”

“You told me to follow my dreams.” he states simply.

“If you’d recall correctly, I told you they existed once. The choice was all yours.”

“If you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have followed them.”

“Why do you pursue this? Do you not know how this story ends?”

He laughs. “I’m not stupid, ‘maid, of course I’m going to die. It’s _what_ I die for that matters. I’ll keep going, as long as I know there’s something left to fight for. Even if this fails, I’ll have changed someone’s life. That’s enough for me.”

You hesitate even more now. This idiotic, naïve wiggler of a troll who believes he can make a difference; you want to save him. You want to change his fate just like you did when you first met him. But you don’t do a damned fucking thing. His is a necessary revolution; and so is the violent nature of his death. They will shape this world. 

Even if you told him everything now, he wouldn't stop. That is both his tragedy and his triumph; his faith in something so impossible. 

He is one of the very few good things left in this world, and you will watch them string his body up, and you will know that it is entirely your doing.

***

You look up into dappled sunlight, thankfully fragmented by trees. Stepping over to the thickest, tallest, largest tree you have ever seen, you ascend to the highest tier of the house built on it. 

You wander past dummies, paintings of birds, animal sketches and fairy tale books. There are pillows and cards scattered on the floor. You float over wiggler’s toys and blunt weapons. You press on until you find his recuperacoon, his lusus sleeping peacefully on the windowsill. You set your oculars on the boy in the sopor slime. His face is still young and his hair still more brown than red. He is four sweeps old. 

You take another black sheet out. With your wands, you inscribe a symbol: a long-tailed comma with its opposite underneath; two comets lapping each other. Underneath this sign you write down the coordinates of the Disciple’s bibles. You tuck it directly underneath his husktop. A future self has already informed you that he will destroy his room after someone’s first try at culling him, leading to its discovery. 

You take one last look at the Summoner. He will wipe every adult off the face off the planet with his revolution and he will die a broken soul.  His real name was never recorded, though you know it. In death, all that is left of us are our titles.

***

The roof of your mansion’s home is the same as you remember it. The windows are all coloured black as sin and the walls are painted that grass green you've grown to loathe.

You are waiting for your successor. When she comes, she will be covered in mustard and fuchsia. You have watched her carefully and shaped her throughout her life. You have killed all her red lovers, anything that could have made her soft of heart or moral in spirit. You have watched her become terrible and achingly beautiful. She is the culmination of everything you have worked for sweeps and sweeps. You would almost be proud if not for the overwhelming grief and horror. They are all dead. Their bodies are stacked on top of each other in your dreams. In one fell swoop, her monstrous lusus did more to Alternia than you ever did. You ache to join them all. Perhaps you do not deserve the penance of death, but still, it is coming. You are relieved too, amidst the sorrow for your race.

There is so much to be tired of, but soon death will finally pat you on the shoulder, whisper, “I’m sorry it’s taken so long,” and kiss you to blessed sleep. 


End file.
